French 'Mother' Kills Teacher in Front of Class

It was headlining AOL on Friday: a story about a woman stabbing a schoolteacher to death in front of a class of five and six-year-olds. The gruesome and bloody crime occurred in the southern French town of Albi; the victim was a 34-year-old mother of two.But a certain bit of information is conspicuously missing from virtually all the reportage. We’re told the killer was under the impression that the teacher had accused her five-year-old daughter of theft. We’re told she had a history of child abuse and “severe psychiatric problems.” We’re told she’s 47. And we’re told she’s a she. But her name is nowhere to be found, and information about her background is...well, you’ll see.

This isn’t true of the victim. Every news source I checked provided her name. The International Business Times (IBD) even led with it in the title: “Deranged Mother Kills Teacher Fabienne Terral-Calmès in Front of Class.” The killer, however, is almost universally identified as “the mother.” But I was sure I knew what the big secret was. Those tow-headed Norwegians are at it again.

The AOL piece, from the AP, did the "The Mother" thing exclusively. Other sources, such as IBD, reported that the police have not released the attacker’s name but that she’s of Spanish origins. Ah, okay, a Franco supporter, no doubt. But I still thought I knew the truth.

So I dug further. New York’s Daily Newsreported that “[a]uthorities would not comment on what spurred the horrific stabbing.” The BBC said that The Mother used a “long knife.” The Telegraphidentified The Mother as a “Spanish national” (emphasis added). We’re getting closer…

I even checked the French publication L’Expresse, which, after being spit out the other end of Google Translate, told us about The Mother, “[I]t would be of Spanish nationality” (obfuscation is always a bit more interesting when processed through artificial unintelligence). The paper also tells us that the school “is located in the district Lapanouse in sensitive urban areas.”

“Sensitive urban areas.”

My, that could be the electronic translation of “scary ghettos where angry, unassimilable North African immigrants will rob you blind and beat you within an inch of your life while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and where, when you call the gendarmes, they say, ‘Are you crazy, Monsieur? We’re not setting foot in there!”

Or it could be that we’ve got nothing on the French when it comes to euphemizing.

Anyway, the “sensitive urban areas” link takes you to a demographics page that, while telling you nothing about race that I can see (I hear they can’t collect that kind of information in France), gives you all sorts of statistics relating to income, education, employment, etc. Because hey, we know that everything boils down to economics. Allahu Milton Friedman.

But now we come to the U.K.’s Daily Mail. Ah, the headline-hungry Mail. It actually tells us in a subtitle that The Mother – get the digitalis and hold on to your hat – is “Moroccan-born.”

Okay, clear your throat, take a sip of water, and, you know, if at first you don’t succeed…

“Muslim!”

There ya go! Was that so hard? I know it doesn’t roll off the tongue when doing negative pieces quite like “Christian,” “conservative,” or “Tea Party” does. But no one ever said journalism would be simple and easy, especially since it is mainly practiced by the simple-minded of easy virtue.

Of course, what will now easily roll off the tongue, in reaction to my commentary here, is “racist!,” even though Islam isn’t a race. “Okay, then Duke must be a religionist. Hmm, no, that’s not it. But he’s got to be some kind of -ist.”

I’m a realist. Some will ask why any of this matters, what purpose it serves to identify the Islamic faith of criminals other than to inspire hatred toward Muslims. Well, why identify a perpetrator as a woman, mother, “youth,” or man? We could just write, “Sentient biped disrupts the function of other sentient biped with forged implement.” That is, until the National Organization for the Advancement of Sentient Bipeds gets in on the act.

It’s no doubt true that people aren’t too likely to persecute more basic groups such as men or youths, since we all usually have men and youths in our families. Racial, ethnic, or creed-oriented hatred can be dangerous. But then why was George Zimmerman quite tendentiously branded a “white Hispanic,” an approach that led to attacks on whites? Why is it that all and sundry claim to this day that mass killers are inordinately white when even just a cursory examination of the facts proves that this isn’t so? Don’t believe for a moment that the media really care about racial harmony. They care about political correctness.

The point here is that when the media steadfastly suppress the facts about crime – skewing people’s grasp of reality with respect to it – there’s a problem. And when the media consistently exercise a double standard, twisting truth to demonize whites or Christians while calling those who speak the truth demons, we have to ask: where does the prejudice really lie?

It was headlining AOL on Friday: a story about a woman stabbing a schoolteacher to death in front of a class of five and six-year-olds. The gruesome and bloody crime occurred in the southern French town of Albi; the victim was a 34-year-old mother of two.

But a certain bit of information is conspicuously missing from virtually all the reportage. We’re told the killer was under the impression that the teacher had accused her five-year-old daughter of theft. We’re told she had a history of child abuse and “severe psychiatric problems.” We’re told she’s 47. And we’re told she’s a she. But her name is nowhere to be found, and information about her background is...well, you’ll see.

This isn’t true of the victim. Every news source I checked provided her name. The International Business Times (IBD) even led with it in the title: “Deranged Mother Kills Teacher Fabienne Terral-Calmès in Front of Class.” The killer, however, is almost universally identified as “the mother.” But I was sure I knew what the big secret was. Those tow-headed Norwegians are at it again.

The AOL piece, from the AP, did the "The Mother" thing exclusively. Other sources, such as IBD, reported that the police have not released the attacker’s name but that she’s of Spanish origins. Ah, okay, a Franco supporter, no doubt. But I still thought I knew the truth.

So I dug further. New York’s Daily Newsreported that “[a]uthorities would not comment on what spurred the horrific stabbing.” The BBC said that The Mother used a “long knife.” The Telegraphidentified The Mother as a “Spanish national” (emphasis added). We’re getting closer…

I even checked the French publication L’Expresse, which, after being spit out the other end of Google Translate, told us about The Mother, “[I]t would be of Spanish nationality” (obfuscation is always a bit more interesting when processed through artificial unintelligence). The paper also tells us that the school “is located in the district Lapanouse in sensitive urban areas.”

“Sensitive urban areas.”

My, that could be the electronic translation of “scary ghettos where angry, unassimilable North African immigrants will rob you blind and beat you within an inch of your life while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and where, when you call the gendarmes, they say, ‘Are you crazy, Monsieur? We’re not setting foot in there!”

Or it could be that we’ve got nothing on the French when it comes to euphemizing.

Anyway, the “sensitive urban areas” link takes you to a demographics page that, while telling you nothing about race that I can see (I hear they can’t collect that kind of information in France), gives you all sorts of statistics relating to income, education, employment, etc. Because hey, we know that everything boils down to economics. Allahu Milton Friedman.

But now we come to the U.K.’s Daily Mail. Ah, the headline-hungry Mail. It actually tells us in a subtitle that The Mother – get the digitalis and hold on to your hat – is “Moroccan-born.”

Okay, clear your throat, take a sip of water, and, you know, if at first you don’t succeed…

“Muslim!”

There ya go! Was that so hard? I know it doesn’t roll off the tongue when doing negative pieces quite like “Christian,” “conservative,” or “Tea Party” does. But no one ever said journalism would be simple and easy, especially since it is mainly practiced by the simple-minded of easy virtue.

Of course, what will now easily roll off the tongue, in reaction to my commentary here, is “racist!,” even though Islam isn’t a race. “Okay, then Duke must be a religionist. Hmm, no, that’s not it. But he’s got to be some kind of -ist.”

I’m a realist. Some will ask why any of this matters, what purpose it serves to identify the Islamic faith of criminals other than to inspire hatred toward Muslims. Well, why identify a perpetrator as a woman, mother, “youth,” or man? We could just write, “Sentient biped disrupts the function of other sentient biped with forged implement.” That is, until the National Organization for the Advancement of Sentient Bipeds gets in on the act.

It’s no doubt true that people aren’t too likely to persecute more basic groups such as men or youths, since we all usually have men and youths in our families. Racial, ethnic, or creed-oriented hatred can be dangerous. But then why was George Zimmerman quite tendentiously branded a “white Hispanic,” an approach that led to attacks on whites? Why is it that all and sundry claim to this day that mass killers are inordinately white when even just a cursory examination of the facts proves that this isn’t so? Don’t believe for a moment that the media really care about racial harmony. They care about political correctness.

The point here is that when the media steadfastly suppress the facts about crime – skewing people’s grasp of reality with respect to it – there’s a problem. And when the media consistently exercise a double standard, twisting truth to demonize whites or Christians while calling those who speak the truth demons, we have to ask: where does the prejudice really lie?